TinyBooks Pro: F.A.Q.

Q: How do I move from month to month?
A: If you open or double-click a TinyBooks Pro document, TinyBooks Pro will display the expense and income entries corresponding to the current month according to your computer's date and time. To switch to a different month, you can select a month from the TinyBooks Pro Month Menu (or use the easy keyboard equivalents), or you can click one of the left or right arrow buttons on the main window, or you can type one of the left or right arrow keys on the keyboard. When you switch to a new month, the Income/Expense Window will immediately reflect the entries for the new month selected.

Q: How do I change the name of the company?
A: The name of the company that you entered when you first created a TinyBooks Pro document is displayed and/or printed as a header in various reports and on the main window. If you need to rename the company (or fix a spelling error), choose the Company and Tax Information item from the TinyBooks Pro Utility Menu. Other company information such as mailing address, web site address, email address, phone, tax rates, and more can also be customized here in the Company and Tax Information dialog.

Q: How do I modify an account name?
A: All account name changes are handled using the Accounts item in the TinyBooks Pro Utility Menu. When you select this item, the Accounts Dialog will appear. This dialog will show a list of all the accounts. To modify an existing account (for instance, to change the name "Postage Expenses" to "Mailing Costs"), just click the account name in question, and then click the "Configure..." button. Make the desired change, and click OK.

Q: How do I delete an account name?
A: All account name changes are handled using the Accounts item in the TinyBooks Pro Utility Menu. When you select this item, the Accounts Dialog will appear. This dialog will show a list of all the accounts. To delete an existing account, click the account name in question, and then click the "Delete..." button. Note, that you cannot delete an account that is in use.

Q: How do I add an account name?
A: All account name changes are handled using the Accounts item in the TinyBooks Pro Utility Menu. When you select this item, the Accounts Dialog will appear. This dialog will show a list of all the accounts. To add an account, simply locate an available position in the account list where you'd like to add the account (in the Deductible Expense section, the Non-Deductible Expense section, the Taxable Income section or the Non-Taxable Income section), and click the "Configure..." button. Type the name of the account, and click OK.

Q: Why does TinyBooks Pro use Account Numbers all the time?
A: Account Numbers makes things easier in lots of ways (for the programmer and for the user), but don't worry...anytime there's a field that requires an Account Number, just type the first letter of the Account Name that you are looking for ("P" for Postage, for example.) A pop-up menu, or an Account Name Dialog, will immediately appear and you can easily choose the Account you are looking for by name without having to remember any numbers. Continue to type the same letter again and again, and you'll automatically be taken to each entry that starts with that letter. When the correct account appears, press RETURN or click OK, and both the name and number of the account should be inserted automatically.

Q: Do I really have to run TinyBooks Pro everytime I have an expense or income item to enter during the month?
A: Many people, myself included, find it more convenient to enter expenses, as they occur, on paper first, and then use TinyBooks Pro at the end of the month to enter all the info at one time. TinyBooks Pro includes an option to print out a paper form to enter any expenses incurred during the month. This option is called Print Interim Expense Entry Form and is available in the Utility Menu of TinyBooks Pro. A similar item is also available for income entries.

Q: Does TinyBooks Pro support Fiscal Years other than January to December?
A: YES! When creating a NEW TinyBooks Pro document (a new "set of books"), you will have the option of customizing the Fiscal Year. TinyBooks Pro does support non-calendar fiscal years.

Q: Does TinyBooks Pro handle business mileage?
A: TinyBooks Pro includes a number of features that make it easy to handle business mileage, but it's still admittedly a work-in-progress, pending feedback from users. In a sense, business mileage is just another expense, and can already be handled by merely including a Business Mileage expense account. To make this easier, TinyBooks Pro includes an item in the Utility Menu called Print Interim Mileage Form. This form makes it easy to list business mileage (date, location and distance), as it occurs.

Q: Can TinyBooks Pro be used for my family books?
A: Yes. TinyBooks Pro is basically a program that makes it easy to enter, and report on, expenses and income, in various categories. This is something of value whether you are doing a company's books, or the books of your own family. You can create different accounts to keep track of different kinds of expenses and income. At the end of each month, or each year, you can easily view or print reports on where the money is going and where it's coming from. It can be as detailed or as general as you like. It's up to you. You're in charge of what accounts you want to create. If you choose very detailed accounts, for instance, you'll be able to see quickly that you spent too much on chocolate and not enough on vegetables (assuming you created separate accounts for these two vital food groups.) If you just create one account called Food, such realizations may be lost to you.

Q: Explain Deductible and Non-Deductible Expenses?
A: See your accountant or lawyer for the real explanation, but what follows, I think, will give you the gist of it. Let's say you're the owner of a small business, and you ship one of your products to a customer. You go to the Post Office and they charge you $10. THAT is a deductible expense. That means you can DEDUCT the cost of that shipping expense from any income you might earn in your business. And, until your business earns more than that $10, you don't even have any profits to declare! But, now let's say your daughter comes down to your business and says "I need a new dress?" You open up the business cash register and give your daughter a twenty dollar bill (OK, obviously, I don't have a daughter or buy dresses!) Well, that twenty is NOT deductible. It's got nothing to do with running your business. You still want to make note of the fact that the business paid out twenty dollars, but the government doesn't allow you to deduct that amount. It's considered a non-deductible expense. TinyBooks Pro can easily be used to account for both kinds of expenses. (Note: In a similar manner, TinyBooks Pro includes both Taxable and Non-Taxable Income accounts.)

Q: How do I backup my TinyBooks Pro data?
A: GOOD question! TinyBooks Pro is one of the most simple applications you can imagine in terms of where everything is stored. When you first create a new set of books, you are asked to name the company, give it a year, and SAVE IT. You choose any name you want. (I might name my document "Winograd-2010-Books", for instance.) Anyway, that ONE file has everything in it...all your expenses and income entries, totals, account names, etc. That is the ONE file that you would want to back up. Always assume that lightning will strike when you least expect it. Back up often. TinyBooks Pro includes an item in the File Menu called "Backup TinyBooks Pro data..." that makes it trivially easy to backup your data. See the TinyBooks Pro Help Window for more complete information. To be frank, YOU are the best form of backup protection. No matter what facility is built-in to TinyBooks Pro, it won't help if your data is lost, or stolen, or fried by a lightning strike, or a hard-drive crash. It really is up to you to ensure a proper backup strategy.

Q: How do you spell Bookkeeping?
A: The correct spelling of the word Bookkeeping is as one word, not two separate words Book Keeping. Bookkeeping is an interesting word because it has 3 pairs of doubled characters in a row. (Try to think of another!) Of course, you do tend to see Book Keeping listed as two words quite often, so I've listed it in this part of the FAQ just in case someone searches for it. Actually, TinyBooks Pro is properly spelled as one word also. But, if you happen to search for Tiny Books, I hope you'll make it here as well.

Q: Does TinyBooks Pro handle recurring expenses?
A: Yes! TinyBooks Pro can easily handle recurring expenses. One of the buttons on the main monthly window is called RECUR ITEM. Just click on any expense or income item in the monthly list and click the RECUR ITEM button to designate that expense (or income) as a recurring expense (or income) item. When you choose to recur an item, you will be asked exactly how you would like TinyBooks Pro to recur this item (for instance, whether it should copy the actual amount, or just put a "0.00" in the Amount as a placeholder, etc.) On your approval, the chosen item will then be duplicated (recurred) in the following months of the business year.

Q: Can I use my existing TinyBooks (non-Pro) documents with the latest release of TinyBooks Pro?
A: ABSOLUTELY! TinyBooks Pro version 7 is a brand new, completely-rewritten version of TinyBooks. A lot of effort was expended to ensure that no existing user of previous versions of TinyBooks would be left behind. The new version of TinyBooks Pro can import a special "TB6-TB7-ConversionFile" which only the latest version 6 of TinyBooks can create. And, since v6 of TinyBooks can convert ANY older TinyBooks document (even going back as far as version 1) to version 6 format...ALL users of TinyBooks can effectively move to TinyBooks Pro version 7 and use all their old information without having to re-type even a single transaction. Complete information can be found on the UPGRADING TINYBOOKS section of this web page, and in the Help Window of both TinyBooks v6 and TinyBooks Pro v7.

Q: I've got more clients than TinyBooks Pro has income accounts! What do I do?
A: Imagine you are running a lawn-mowing business and you have 100 different clients. You obviously have more clients than TinyBooks Pro has individual income accounts. But, this is not a problem. Create a single new taxable income account and call it "Lawn-Mowing Income". In TinyBooks Pro, everytime you add a new item to any account, that item always includes room for a Comment or Description about the particular item. In the Comment field, you should put the client's ID#, or the client's name, or the client's initials, or whatever is appropriate in your case. Later, when you are creating reports, TinyBooks Pro offers great flexibility in deciding which items to include in any report. You can, for instance, choose to report on all items in the "Lawn-Mowing Income" account, in which case you'll get a report of the total income generated by all your lawn-mowing clients. But, if you'd prefer to get a report on just the income generated from a single client, you could just instruct TinyBooks Pro to include only those items in the "Lawn-Mowing Income" account that have your particular client's ID, name or initials as part of the Comment Text. You are thus able to support an almost infinite number of clients, even though TinyBooks Pro has only a finite number of accounts. (And, note that this same technique can be used to expand the effective number of expense accounts too, if needed.)

Q: My TinyBooks Pro windows don't look right! The columns don't line up!
A: TinyBooks Pro uses a font called Courier. (Older versions of TinyBooks also used Courier New.) These fonts are known as fixed-width or mono-spaced fonts, where each character in the font is the same width. If this font is not available on your Mac, you may well see columns that don't line up properly. Courier, by default, is always installed on your Mac. But, if you are running an Apple or a 3rd-Party font utility that can turn on and off different fonts, make sure that you do NOT accidentally turn off Courier, as TinyBooks Pro requires that font. If you have any font-related concerns, please contact the author directly.

Q: Can I EXPORT my TinyBooks Pro data into Excel or other spreadsheets?
A: Absolutely. In TinyBooks Pro's Accounts, Bottom Line Reports, and Reports and Transaction Search windows, there is a button called EXPORT that will allow you to save (i.e. Export) the contents of the window as tab-delimited text. Tab-delimited text is a standard output format that is easily imported by Excel (as well as virtually all other spreadsheet programs.)

Q: When I print an invoice (or other form), all I see is my company name. Where's the address?
A: By default, TinyBooks Pro will use the information in the Company and Tax Information dialog (which can be found in the TinyBooks Pro Utility menu) when it prints an invoice or other form. If your invoice or other form is missing the address or phone (etc.) of your company, you just need to fill in the missing information in the Company and Tax Information dialog. Once entered, new printed invoices (or other forms) will include all the appropriate information.

Q: Can I add my own company logo to an invoice/estimate? And, can I print my company name in my own choice of fonts?
A: Yes. By default, TinyBooks Pro will print an invoice (or other form) using the information in the Company and Tax Information dialog (available in the Utility Menu.) This information is attractively printed in the upper-left portion of an invoice (or other form.) If you'd prefer, you can create a picture (called "CompanyLogo.jpg") that includes this information (name, address, phone, URL and logo) and TinyBooks Pro will print your picture instead of the information in the Company and Tax Information dialog. The look of the company-area of an invoice/estimate is thus totally customizable. See the Invoices section of the TinyBooks Pro Help window for step-by-step instructions on how to do this.

Last Modified: January 1, 2012